Venezuela's Artistic Upheaval; President Attacks Elitism, and Museum Founder Is a Casualty

The museum she built from scratch and directed for more than 25 years continues to bear her name and imprint, at least for the moment. But Sofía Imber herself has become the most prominent victim and symbol of the ''cultural revolution'' that President Hugo Chávez has unleashed as part of his campaign to free Venezuela from a ''rancid oligarchy.''

Ms. Imber, 76, an art critic, founded the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art in 1971 in a garage and made it into one Latin America's most admired arts institutions, with a strong and wide-ranging collection that includes major works by Picasso, Braque, Botero, Bacon, Chagall, Kandinsky and Rauschenberg. But somewhere along the line she ran afoul of Mr. Chávez, a left-wing populist who took power in 1999 with ideas of his own about the proper role of the arts.

''Culture has become elitist as a result of being managed by elites,'' he complained in January on a weekly radio program of which he is host. ''Princes, kings, heirs, families took over institutions, institutions that have cost the state millions and millions. They wanted to do whatever they wanted. They thought they were autonomous governments, principalities.''

Mr. Chávez has described the subsequent purge of Ms. Imber and others as the start of a ''Bolivarian cultural revolution,'' a reference to Venezuela's national hero, Simón Bolívar. But that term has generated apprehension here, especially in view of Mr. Chávez's declaration ''I am a Maoist,'' made during the visit this month of President Jiang Zemin of China, and the agreements he has signed to bring Cuban advisers and exchange programs to Venezuela.

Cultural affairs in this oil-rich nation of 24 million people are supervised by the same ministry that is responsible for education and sports. Last year Mr. Chávez made Manuel Espinoza, 64, a former Communist Party member and painter whose work has been exhibited, among other places, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the country's top cultural official by appointing him director of the National Council of Culture.

In an interview here, Mr. Espinoza said Mr. Chávez's summons to a ''cultural revolution'' should be no cause for alarm. ''It is a mistake to tie a word to a particular historical experience,'' he said. ''Revolutions are not defined just by China's deplorable experience, and if you look up the word in the dictionary you will find no reference to China there. What we want is a transformation, a rapid change that liberates the creative potential of all the people.''

As part of that process, Mr. Espinoza said, the government has begun building community cultural centers in rural and provincial areas, each with a price tag ''less than the cost of an apartment here in Caracas.'' The government cultural budget is also being increased by more than $100 million, making spending on culture more than double that under the previous government.

But ''redefining culture,'' as Mr. Espinoza calls it, also involves shifting the focus from the fine arts toward artisanry and other forms of expression with a practical political purpose. ''It is necessary for the state to stimulate the creative powers of the people so as to encourage their participation in the process of social mobilization and integration,'' he said.

Mr. Chávez, 46, is a former Army colonel who in 1992 led an unsuccessful coup attempt here. Little is known about his own tastes in the arts, other than his habit of singing folk songs or quoting the poetry of Walt Whitman during his long speeches, but his views on the relationship between politics and culture could not be clearer.

''Culture needs to be at the service of development, not at the service of elites which have led a distorted cultural process,'' he said in a recent speech. Speaking of his government and its policies, he added that he aspired to ''a culture that is at the service of the human revolution, of creation, of the liberation of the Venezuelan people.''

The purge that Mr. Chávez ordered has affected all 36 government cultural institutions here, from museums and orchestras to theater groups and the state publishing house, Mr. Espinoza said. But the ouster of Ms. Imber as the head of a museum that added her name to its title a decade ago as an homage to her efforts is seen by Mr. Chávez's critics as emblematic of the increasingly sectarian nature of the revolutionary process.

''I think this museum is not to their liking because they only want art that is nationalistic and patriotic,'' Ms. Imber, who was born in Russia and came to Venezuela as a child, said in an interview. ''In a certain way, they are right when they say that the art at my museum is elite and cosmopolitan, because I have always believed that when you give people something good, something that elevates their taste, they like it.''

But under Ms. Imber's stewardship, the museum has also conducted programs to take art to the city's slums and to bring poor children to the museum for art classes. In addition, admission to the museum, as to most other cultural institutions in Venezuela, is free, a legacy of the oil boom of the 1970's, which led to lavish government spending on the arts.

Ms. Imber's work at the museum and her efforts to promote 20th-century Latin American and Spanish art made her an important cultural figure throughout the continent. Several grateful foreign governments have awarded her medals, and in 1998 she won Unesco's Picasso Prize.

''This is a world-class museum with a first-class collection that she assembled relentlessly, plus it's well managed, beautifully installed and has a great reputation for its programs,'' said William H. Luers, a former United States ambassador to Venezuela and former president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. ''It's due to her, and everyone knows it, which makes it a national outrage that she should be dispensed with so unceremoniously.''

Ms. Imber has been an outspoken critic of Mr. Chávez and is the widow of Carlos Rangel, a political writer who was an adversary of many of the Marxist theorists who have risen to power with Mr. Chávez. But Mr. Espinoza denied that politics or personal revenge were factors in Ms. Imber's dismissal, saying that her ouster was part of ''a natural process of renovation and renewal'' intended to end what he described as the stagnation of culture here.

''I am a personal friend of Sofía's, and I continue to admire and esteem her,'' he said. ''But I am absolutely convinced that to preserve and guarantee her work, it was necessary to replace her.''

Ms. Imber's successor as director of the museum, which reopened on April 8 after being closed for two months for renovations, is Rita Salvestrini, a former deputy of hers. Ms. Salvestrini said the museum must ''reflect the will of the state, not of a single person'' and indicated that her management and collection philosophy will be different from that of her predecessor.

''I must say that I do not know why there has been such an emphasis over the past decade on acquiring 20th-century Spanish art, some of it by minor names,'' she said in an interview. ''If you try to find a Latin American artist, you will find Botero but no one else, so I think the correct path is to fill that vacuum and open more toward Latin American art.''

Whether by coincidence or not, that approach dovetails with Mr. Chávez's attacks on what he calls the political and cultural hegemony of the United States and Europe and his constant calls for pan-Latin American unity, or Bolivarianismo, as he labels it. Ms. Salvestrini also talked of strengthening the museum's Web site, www.maccsi.org.ve, and its programs to make art more accessible to ordinary Venezuelans.

''We need to communicate more effectively'' to shed an elitist image, she said. ''If you look at the attendance figures, you will see that they have dropped dramatically in recent years, to a level that I find worrisome.''

But others in the art world say it is the apparent application of overtly ideological criteria to programs here that makes them uneasy.

''I'm scared by this stuff, this utilitarian approach to culture, which just kills art,'' said Mr. Luers, who is now chairman of the United Nations Association. The danger exists, he added, that ''by reshaping museums for purposes of national identity they will lose the broader impact on society, to see how Venezuelan art relates to the art of the world and in some ways is superior.''